


unfinished sympathy

by but_seriously



Category: The Great (TV 2020)
Genre: F/M, bit of canon divergence here and there but follows the plot of the show overall, here there be angst ahead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:00:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25269505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_seriously/pseuds/but_seriously
Summary: "They're still out of seal fat," Peter says apologetically.
Relationships: Catherine/Peter III, Yekatarina II Alekseyevna | Catherine II of Russia/Pyotr III Fyodorovich | Peter III of Russia
Comments: 46
Kudos: 271





	1. mind / body

**Author's Note:**

> watched the great. got obsessed. got super high one night and wrote this. tiny re-writes of canon written in pure self-indulgence. my apologies.
> 
> title from massive attack.

**[unfinished sympathy](https://t.co/xSwOeYYb57); **

He’s had yet another fucking epiphany.

His mouth smells of cake and raspberries and he’s having an epiphany and he wants her to know. He’s telling her about it as he pounds into her. If she wasn’t so apathetic about the entire situation - her, flat on her back, Peter Her Husband rutting between her legs - she would howl with laughter. Peter says he - oh, she must pause, of all the _ridiculous_ \- Peter sounds like he is experiencing what it’s like to be a normal human capable of thought. 

Catherine has somehow doubted whether someone could be so stupid, but she suspects this is one of those moments Marial’s always ranting about, how her heart is too soft. She’s always been optimistic - she’s not about to stop now. But Peter really does test her ability to stay buoyant in these tides. All the time.

She glances at him— he's not done yet.

“Something has shifted in me,” Peter seems to have deduced with a euphoria not unlike a child with a shiny new toy. “I know not what, but—”

His cock is shifting in her, that’s what. She tries to think of Leo, but decides against it. She’s promised to never insult him that way. Willing Peter to finish quickly she says, “It’s just been a torrid few days.”

“Exactly,” he agrees absently, before his face changes, mercurial as always, into an expression of abject pleasure. “Ooh, here it goes!”

Her thighs clench involuntarily around his hips with the force of his thrust, and she feels wet trickling between her legs.

Catherine expects him to stuff his cock back into his trousers, not a single bashful bone in his body, bid her an _adieu_ and go trot off to eat pears from between George’s legs or something similarly gormless. But he does not. Without even straightening his clothes he half-rolls off of her and collapses onto the bed beside her, where she’s sat up on her elbows.

Sweating, Peter lies on the bed. She looks at him with a curiosity not even she can feign, twittering flightless bird that she is reduced to in his company. Peter doesn’t speak at first for his heaving chest, but when she’s rested her head gingerly on the space beside him he turns to her, a pleased sort of puff red in his cheeks.

He _should_ look so pleased. He’d spent quite a lot inside her.

He shocks her further by asking, “What do you normally do now?”

Why isn’t he chin deep in George’s cunt right now?

“I normally have a bath,” is what she says instead.

“Great.” He stretches, pleased as a cat. “Let’s do that, then.”

  
  


—

  
  


“Are you sure?” she asks, again.

“Your hearing should still be intact. I did not fuck you _that_ hard.” Peter dips a toe into the steaming water suspended in her copper bath. “Do you really bathe in this thing? Where’s the rest of it?"

“It fits me just fine,” she says, somewhat defensively. This is probably the longest Peter has ever spent in her apartments. Her bathroom, which she had once thought lavish in size, seemed cramped with him in it.

“You are quite small,” he says, as though noticing for the first time. “I suppose it fares you well. Let us test its build.”

With a quick slide Peter is in the tub. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised when water doesn’t slosh everywhere, wetting the floors. She supposed Peter could be graceful when he wanted.

Peter is gazing up at her expectantly. “Come on then, wife.”

She presses her lips together and shrugs her chemise off her shoulders. Peter tracks this motion, but not with any sort of lust in his eyes. He’s never turned bedroom eyes towards her before. She is not bitter.

It seems he is watching her with fascination. The ripples of her biceps, her hair falling down her back, the knobs of her spine as she leans over to climb into the tub. She splashes some water onto his arms that frame the lip of the tub, and she mentally chastises herself. 

There’s barely enough space for her; Peter’s long legs take up most of the tub, but she manages to fit between them in a way that’s quite comfortable.

Like two whales in a tank absurdly small they observe each other silently. Peter splashes some water into her face. Playfully. She leans back against the cloth Marial - who had balked at the sight of a naked Peter in the sacred walls of her bathroom - had laid out, watching him be playful. He is never like this with her. It is strange. Refreshing, even. She usually has to think three responses ahead whenever she has to speak with him, but in this tub she feels herself relaxing, her thoughts leaving her.

“Nice curves,” Peter says.

“What?” she asks.

“This tub supports my back marvelously,” Peter notes. “And it is actually very deep. It’s a rather deceiving looking tub. A lot like you.”

“Are you calling me a tub?”

“You could never be a tub. Look at the size of you!”

“What do you mean I’m deceiving-looking?” She scowls. 

“For starters,” Peter says, splashing her again—she swats at the droplets uselessly— “you are much cleverer than you look.”

Pig. “Thank you, husband.”

“And this is a cleverly-designed tub. I like it,” Peter says. Proclaims, more like - like his say is absolute. As if it should be the most crazed form of validation. In his head it most definitely is like that.

Peter points vaguely at her naked shoulders. His gaze is lofty as always, but with intention this time. She feels an odd flush that isn’t from the flowered bath water.

Still pointing, Peter says, “You have a rash.”

“Oh. Yes.” She looks down at it. “It broke out about the time you were ill.”

“I’m touched,” Peter says, and for the thousandth time she wonders if he actually means it. Because he’s weird that way.

“This shift in you,” she says to change the subject, “it is for change?”

“Yes. But how? I don’t know how. It's a fucking conundrum.”

She is glad she is warm and grounded in this tub, because her brain vibrating to life almost knocks her to her feet. “You would like to be loved.”

Peter scoffs. “I am loved.”

She hmms, _Maybe so_. “Someone tried to kill you.”

Peter allows her that and laughs softly. "Toosh—” he gives her a knowing look, “ _ay_." 

The fact that Peter had actually _retained_ something she’d told him in that big head of his is too much - she is _really_ glad to be sitting down.

Peter is smiling at her - oh, it’s because she’s smiled at him first.

  
  


—

  
  


His wife looks lovely in the water.

His wife. It wasn’t at all a difficult notion to accept in the beginning. Archie and Auntie Lisbeth had agreed that he should marry and produce a male heir to secure power. He liked power. People do a funny jig for you if you want, at the drop of a hat. The image of Velementov balancing his fat arse on one stubby leg always did amuse him so.

But anyway. Archie had a vision of Catherine. Orlo scribbled some sweet nonsense on his behalf, they fought like rabid wolves and fucked like limp birds and nearly brought the court to its knees with the tattle they got up to— and now they are here, having a bath together.

It’s like what Mother says. Life brings the unexpected, so clean yourself up and get yourself some fresh underthings.

Or something like that. 

Anyway, his wife.

Looking at her with her cheeks flushed and her hair stringy with perfumed oil she didn’t look so daunting. The water made her shrink into her actual self, a small and not-at-all-plotting-to-escape-him wife; a smiling little wife, someone who looked like she adored him endlessly.

He’ll say one thing. It was a look he could get used to, even when she was reminding him that someone out there hated him enough to kill him.

“Toosh. _Ay.”_

That was good, she deserved that. 

Oh, something's happened. 

Her face does a funny thing. It begins to smile. Not like the smiles that she had given him before. 

In much the way a secret would, it spread surreptitiously across her lips, and he wouldn’t have caught it had he not been reclined so close in that little tub of hers.

Was that a thawing? In the Empress’ cold, frigid, bitch heart? (These are not his words; he overheard Lady Svenska one afternoon and admits he had chortled.) Imagine that.

Fuck, he should learn some new words then. 

He’s so busy scrolling through the list of vocabulary his tutor had taught him in his school days that he goes through conversation with her mindlessly, feeling his body turn liquid with the water. His toes brush her sides. She has soft skin.

“Your point is that you would need to be a different leader,” Caroline deduces something or other, and he looks up in attention.

“Right. Yes. I suppose so.”

Catherine is always so earnest, and she is no less that when she says, “Listen to the people. What do they want?”

“What do they want?" What the fuck?" What about what I want?”

“You would like them to love you, and be happy,” she says. She has a smile on her face that is strangely compelling; he cannot help but listen when she looks at him that way, mouth turned the right way up and forehead free of troubled lines.

“What they want.” Yes, he would like that. People. Loving him. Being happy. “It’s a novel idea. Possibly French?”

Catherine makes no gesture of confirming which school of thought it belonged to, instead speaking fast of things that somehow he already knew in himself — of _course_ it made sense to seek the council of his people, what idiot bloke wouldn’t? It was the obvious road to pleasing them, and he does so love when someone looks at him in appreciation. He likes the way gratitude changes a face. He can always tell when it’s That Look, when it's real. Something that pulls about the eyes. He’s yet to ascertain what it is exactly.

“Science exhibitions!” Catherine gushes. The surface of the bathwater ripples - she is never so animated, and Peter finds that the bathroom is an excellent echo chamber for her excitement. “People _love_ them.”

Catherine must love them too from the way she speaks of things Archie would and has spit at - science, intellectuals, art— _I could pick the art!_ she says with a slap of the water, and damn it, yes, let’s get some art in this fucking palace. 

“What are your favourites?” he asks. 

“Oh, Baroque, definitely,” is her instant reply. "have you seen Caravaggio? His work is so theatrical! The way he combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, _gilding_ , white and pastel _colours_ —the surprise and illusion of it!”

“The motion and drama,” he adds, wishing he had a glass to toast.

“Exactly!” she says. Her eyes widen, and she wets her lips before leaning in slightly. “There is so much I want to show you.”

“Let’s do it, then.” He decides, then and there. “Art is coming to Russia.”

Catherine, his once and former prim-as-a-teacup queen, practically shivers with giddiness. “Huzzah.”

Moved, he inclines his head. “Huzzah.”

  
  


—

  
  


He finds himself thinking about the way Catherine's hair looks when wet as he ponders art in the gallery a week later. 

The court is abuzz with both smiling and weeping, something he had once thought rather ridiculous, but he supposes stranger things have happened in Russia. Like the time Grigor and him saw a deer take on a wounded bear whilst they were hunting last Winter.

Aunt Elisabeth is particularly partial to a painting of a dark-haired woman licking a peach.

“Look at it,” Aunt Elisabeth breathes. “She is so sure and uncompromising—sincere even when she’s being hot and hasty.” Her face takes on that expression she has right before she says something that makes him feel like his insides have gone through a fig presser. “I remember a late summer when quinces arrived unexpectedly early, catching us all in delight. I walked into your father giving Louis - bless his soul - specific instructions of what to make of them. He caught sight of me and the look in his eyes absolutely _held_ me. He grabbed me around the waist and flung me onto a table littered with artichokes. I still get aroused when I eat one. Louis made himself quite scarce that afternoon. He was always a perceptive man; shame about his passing.”

“Aunt Elisabeth,” Peter says impatiently—

Christ, she’s still speaking.

“—and I began to feel a revelation stirring within my breast - now that, my darling, is where you should take Catherine.”

He does a double take. “Pardon me?”

"The role of the wife to an emperor is so crucial that she can either make or break a court."

Yes, nothing she hasn't said before.

"Has her help not sowed great benefits this week?"

Peter deliberates this with a bob of his head. "Yes, I suppose."

"You should repay her in _kind_ ," she says, and glances meaningfully at the painting before them.

He waits expectantly.

Aunt Elisabeth sighs. "Do you remember the special tongue trick I told you about?"

"With your diagrams how could I not?" he mutters.

"Tonight Chekhov is checking on Tatyana's boy, the one who has pox, and I have to attend an org—I will be busy." 

"Right." He rubs the back of his head. "Why are you telling me this?" 

“I think by now you ought to perform the fertility ritual by yourselves,” she says sagely.

“Really? Without you and Chekhov practically shoving yourselves into my wife’s pussy to inspect my seed?”

“You should not speak of your wife's delicate handles that way.” Aunt Elisabeth fixes him with _that_ glare. 

“Do not,” he says warningly.

“I’m sure you will find there are other, less crass euphemisms.” She regards him down her nose, yet still so wide-eyed as she drives home her point. “You underestimate the power of eloquence.”

“Hm,” He mulls this over. Maybe. “Orlo!”

  
  


—

  
  


Over dinner he thought about the last (and first) time he'd eaten Catherine’s pus… He pauses, remembering Orlo's stammering commentary.

Over dinner he thought about the last (and first) time he'd eaten Catherine's womanhood. No, that sounds fucked. 

Over dinner he thought about the last (and first) time he'd eaten Catherine's pussy (fuck Orlo.) She seemed to like it, so he thought to do it again before royally bedding her. Aunt Elisabeth still hadn't managed to procure any seal fat, and she said the ritual would work better if Catherine was nice and slick. 

She's gotten nice and slick in that audience chamber, alright. 

"Well, time for bed," he announced to their table of two. "Come, wife. Duty calls." 

"Brilliant," she said, clapped her hands, dropped her napkin, and stood to go get changed for bed. He stays for a few more shots of vodka, because vodka. 

By the time he comes to her in his robe, she was already perched in her usual position at the foot of his bed, on her back, knees parted, her night dress just waiting to be lifted. She was a quick one, his wife. Fucking efficient. Just like him. 

Since he is a changed man, he remembers his niceties. "You look pretty."

There is a beat. 

"Thank you," says Catherine from somewhere behind the mountain peaks of her knees. 

"Think nothing of it," he waves as he makes his way to her.

Catherine smiles. It pulls at her lips and hikes her eyebrows, but it is not a warm one. He eerily remembers mother, how she used to sit with him as they picnicked. 

He drops to his knees. Catherine lets out a quiet, "What?"

"They're still out of seal fat," Peter says apologetically.

"I know that, but—"

He brushes her skirt out of the way as she talks, and takes in the soft swell of her pussy. Well, there was no point rushing it. He licked his lips and began. 

One. 

Catherine snaps her mouth shut.

He licks the number two against her cunt. 

Catherine barely makes a sound.

The number three is a quick slip and swerve down her clit, and beneath his hands, her thighs clenched. 

He remembers Aunt Lisbeth's advice to take slow care with the numbers six and eight, and continues on.

He rather enjoyed this special tongue trick; it gives him pause about the big load he was going to shoot into her. He'd never thought such things before. Amazing.

At eleven, she gasps. Twelve, her hips stutter.

It makes her cunt push against his lips in a way it never had before, and he almost chokes on a swallow.

Well fuck him. He'd chalked it up to unfamiliarity that first time, but Catherine _really_ likes this special tongue trick, doesn't she?

Fourteen through twenty goes by with an ease he enjoys. It is not his saliva that is making her wet now, he is certain, the way new flavours melt across his tongue. If it's one thing he has utmost confidence in, it is his tongue and its ability to discern minute flavours filling his mouth.

He loses count somewhere along the way and just began licking circles in a mad delirium. 

Catherine starts writhing. He hears sheets rustling; wonders if she has them in tight, desperate grips.

At one point she grabs at his hair particularly violently - his stomach swoops - and gives a ragged sort of gasp. " _Peter_." 

"What?" He lifts his head, slightly dazed. "Problem?”

She lies there, flushed and heaving, staring at him with an expression on her face that is an off mix of pleasure and fury. 

She is a tricky woman. He has to hear it directly from her mouth otherwise all sorts of other problems would start popping up. 

She blushes prettily and manages to look even more furious at the same time. "No, I mean. I just—" Her eyes close and she sighs heavily. "Keep going." 

Fuck, yes then. 

He resumed his Emperor duties and began to eat her pussy even more enthusiastically. He was quite resolved in his task, deliberating each stroke of his tongue so precisely slit to clit that she began to whimper his name once more. It was addictive, listening to her cries. Like a good shot of pepper vodka before a dawn ride. He wondered what vodka would taste like on her cunt. Next time, he supposed.

He remembers belatedly that he's only supposed to get her nice and slick. She is quite past that now, but he thrusts his tongue into her slit just to help her along a little bit more.

She cries out.

So he does it again.

Her hands find their way to his head again, where small fingers yank at his hair. On the flutters of a gasp she says, "I think that's quite enough of that."

He drags the back of his palms across his wet mouth. "Ah, you're right. Let's move things along."

Without further ado he climbs onto the bed, knees between her thighs, and Catherine, as though unprepared, looks at him imploringly. The look of total bewilderment on his face is something he can't quite fathom. They've done this plenty of times now.

"Yes, wife?" he prompts, using one knee to nudge her thigh open wider, and placing his palms down by her hips.

He slides into her. 

Catherine pants, clenching down on him; the breath of it warms his chest.

"Fuck," he grits out. 

Her cunt is fucking wonderful. She is hot, wet, a different kind of tightness than she's ever welcomed him with before. The kind of tightness that makes his cock ache even more with want. He looks down at her. Her eyes are closed and she is breathing heavily. He keeps looking at her as he pulled his cock all the way out, and inched back in. 

Her breath hitches and she lets out a cry. 

Fucking. Huzzah. 

“You should count with me, wife,” he grunts down at her, rather lost for breath “Aunt Elisabeth says teamwork makes the dream work.”

"That,” she counters, a corner of her lip quirking up, “or you've forgotten how to count past twenty?" 

"Fucking joke. I'm fucking you and you're still so vicious with your tongue." He stills his hips - takes his time adjusting inside her walls, his cock flexing, trembling, begging him to move.

Her eyes sparkle. Two spheres of green standing out against a sea of flushed skin. "Oh, I'm sure you can take more than that." 

"I can," he confirms vehemently. He feels his breath go shallow as he starts to thrust into her. "Can you?" 

She looks him in the eye and says, "Three." 

"Four," he says, feeling the strain on his hands from holding himself up. But the sight of her mouthing the next number more than fucking makes up for it. 

"Six," they count together, "Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten." 

Christ. He's supposed to keep a steady rhythm til seventy. At this fucking rate he's going to give out much sooner than that. Embarrassing. And he's supposed to shoot an heir inside her? 

Fuck, where were they? 

"Eighteen," his wife says, her voice oddly pitched. "Nineteen. T-twenty." 

His hips jerk involuntarily. Fucking Christ in hell, she was wet. "And _that's_ twenty one." 

"Keep going," she murmurs, her eyes dropping lazily, before they burst open again "Counting, I mean. We mustn’t lose track?" 

"Twenty two," he says, and he feels fucking triumphant, isn't that ridiculous? He tries to evenly space out his next thrusts like Chekhov had instructed countless times, but it’s getting increasingly difficult.

And Catherine. Her mouth opening and closing in silent gasps, her hips bucking to meet his, her eyes struggling to stay open. What a sight.

Without warning she pulls him down until his chest presses against her breasts, flushed and dampened to a lovely pink sheen; his arms give way and he groans quietly.

“Thirty,” he says. Their lips brush together as they count.

“Yes,” Catherine seems to agree, albeit slightly agitatedly. “Thirty one, thirty two, thirty three, thirty four…”

It’s maddening, really, to have to go this much at such a painfully moderate pace. He curls his fingers into fists: it catches on her hair, glowing gold in the candlelight. She has such soft hair.

“What’s next?” he asks. Catherine licks her lips as if he’d wet them with his breath.

“What’s what?” she breathes.

“I lost count,” he pants, panicking slightly, forehead dropping into the crook of her neck, “Fuck, I lost count. Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” Catherine answers with a strained whimper. “Surely—” another thrust, another gasp. “Surely we must be nearly done?”

“I’d say a solid seventy by now.”

“Yes - _fuck_ \- harder.”

"Seventy," he pants. "Seventy two, seventy three, seventy four—”

“Seventy five, seventy six, seventy seven," she hisses, and if Chekhov were here he'dsurely be repremanding their pace in that disapproving way of his and nag at them to go slower but fuck him, fuck the fertility ritual, rutting against Catherine was the closest he'd come to losing his mind in a while. 

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Catherine says in lieu of counting and practically claws at the skin of his back to pull him closer. 

He falls against her, head in her neck; his arms wrapping a tight embrace against the back of her neck. At least this way it looked like she wanted him first. His eyes screw shut, his head nearly splits open as he gasps out, barely, “Eightyoneeightytwoeighty _fuck"_

 _”Just—_ just keep going. Do _not_ stop at hundred, damn you.”

He chuckles, low and shaky into her ear. “This is going to be the most powerful baby the world has ever seen.”

Catherine, surprisingly, lets out a breath of a laugh in reply. “With his father's temperament and his mother's wit.”

He frowns. Mean. 

“His father's larks and his mother's downturned mouth.”

“With his father's fixation on beetroot and his mother's _in_ tellectual hobbies.”

“With his father's strong legs and his mother's beautiful eyes.”

Catherine’s breath comes out funny. “What?”

“Your beautiful fucking eyes, fuck,” he says helplessly, “we're at a hundred and thirty, I cannot—”

“You were still counting?”

“You sound impressed,” he says, and for that he reaches down in blind search of her clit, and finds it slick, hot and swollen against his thumb. Oh fucking Christ in a tree, he wants his tongue there again—

"After we are done,” he swears her, tone all a gravel, “I am going to lick your pussy until your vocal chords shatter. "

Her eyes roll to the back of her head. “Something—something is happening again—I _can't—_ ”

“That’s called an orgasm, wife—” he barely has time to say before he is lost as well.

—

  
  


Oh, Lord.

Oh, shit.

Oh.

Fuck.

It’s happened again.

Even if Aunt Elisabeth hadn’t already instructed her to lie in repose she doesn’t think she can move any part of her body. Her breathing comes in deep, stuttering heaves: her chest pushes uncomfortably against Peter’s every time he breathes as well.

There’s a tingling between her legs, in the midst of all the wetness trickling out of her.

She screws her eyes shut and bites down on a groan.

It’s happened _again_.

With Peter, _again_.

And it had felt amazing, even better than when he’d last licked her open and left her a screaming, wanton, fuckery of a mess.

She wills herself to calm down, evening out her inhales. It’s okay. It’s alright. Lots of men pleasure their wives. Peter’s mouth and his cock weren’t special. Lot’s of men leave their wives unable to breathe after a good fuck.

Look at Leo! Maybe Leo could even—

Her mind shutters away that thought.

“I—” she gulps, and pushes her palms against Peter’s chest as much as she can in her state. “I need to go back to my apartments.”

“Can you?” Peter asks. He sounds a mixture of surprised and impressed. “I don’t know about you, but my legs are shaking.”

She bites her lip, hating how candid he always is. How truthful. How she should be anything but in return - and yet: “So are mine.”

“Stay, then,” Peter says simply, sleepily. He rolls off of her into his great, silken pillows, and she convinces herself she can finally breathe a little bit easier when cold air immediately rushes to bite at the loss of his body heat.

“Alright,” she says. In much the same way he’d welcomed her the last time. Uncertain, yet dutiful.

Peter, with some insistent yanking, manages to get the covers over them. She settles in for the night on her side of the bed, grateful for the pillows between them.

It is usually at this point, as sleep threatens to overtake her, that she usually feels shameful, a body lent for short use, sore in unsightly places.

It does not come.

She is too busy ignoring how his knees are pointing towards her, just a foot away from her hand.

**tbc**

  
  
  



	2. dust / gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote the second half of this in one go because my word doc decided to get corrupted and, you know, LOSE ALL MY PRECIOUS WORDS.
> 
> it is not the ideal version of the chapter, because by now i'd forgotten most of what i'd actually written, but the sentiments remain.
> 
> also, i am posting this up without actually re-reading it first because i'm a piece of shit that way.

**unfinished sympathy;**

_chapter two_

He had not expected victory to burst forth through the cold, but it comes, and it comes with mighty fucking applause.

He wouldn’t be sending any delegates to Sweden anytime soon, and Hugo and him were not the best friends he’d mistakenly fated them to be, but the war was over.

He’d won.

Bodies came for him in droves, slapping his shoulder and kissing his cheeks. He catches Catherine’s eye in the thickening crowd, and she is looking at him with an expression so pleased. 

Her gloved fingers slip from his palm as the court carries him away, but he has time to turn and say, “Thank you.”

“What for?” She looks confused. Sweet thing.

“I know I don’t talk in my sleep,” he says, and the look leveled between them is layered with things he is only just beginning to understand.

Catherine sends him a small smile, not a single boastful bone in her body. She’s an Empress with grace, he’ll tell you that.

A bit like mother.

Well.

No. Not really.

Not like mother at all.

—

Velementov is practically weeping vodka just halfway through dinner, and Grigor offers to cut his meal short to kick him to his room. Peter hasn’t commented on the squirrel growing from his chin; no point ruining a good meal. Besides, Grigor said he’d lost his blade.

“You know, my special blade, the one I like to use for shaving! Can’t shave without it!” Grigor, handsome git that he is, thumps him on the back. “You just _had_ to win Sweden over too, didn’t you? You fucking scoundrel.”

“Grigor!” George starts, but Peter waves a hand.

“No one can resist my charm for long,.” He winks at Catherine, who quirks her lips back at him. They have inside jokes now, it’s delightful.

Grigor pushes his chair back indelicately, grabbing a fistful of Velementov’s jacket. “Come on, you old lump.”

They clamber out the door, drunk and drunker, as the rest of the court take that as their cue to leave as well. 

Conversation lulls to a murmur around them. Aunt Elisabeth sways by with her butterflies in her wake, insisting to Catherine that they are spelling out ‘Congratulations’. Whilst his wife’s attention is taken, George puts a sly hand on his thigh.

“I think the Emperor has the right to celebrate the night away.” She smirks those red lips he so adores, her eyes turning heavy lidded. “I have some ribbons I can decorate your chest with.”

“Not tonight, I don’t think.” He’s in the mood for vodka. Lot’s of it. “Wife, join me for a nightcap!”

It is not a question. An Emperor would never deign to just _ask_. His father always said so. 

Aunt Elisabeth sends him a _look_ which he ignores. Catherine simply nods and pushes her chair back, barely glancing at George as she makes her leave. She hasn’t said much at all throughout dinner. She is probably as choked with glory as he is, and her small body cannot quite handle it.

“Night, George.” He taps her on her knee, and she gives him an odd smile. Doesn’t matter. He’ll ask her about it tomorrow.

His journey back to his apartments is interrupted every so often with noblemen and random serfs offering their praise and congratulations. He basks in it a little, perhaps rushing them a bit, _but he has an appointment with the Empress_ , he apologises, _so he must dash_.

Catherine stands on his balcony with a contemplative look on her face, waiting for him. There is a glass of warmed vodka in her hands. It steams in the air, its sweet perfume wafting to his senses. Hot honey lemon with _vodka_ , but of course, and the look of it is enough to warm his insides.

The tray is set on the wide balustrade, next to her elbows. She is still nursing her drink as she leans out into the air that nips red onto their cheeks.

He takes a sip, pauses to proclaim, “ _Brilliant!_ ” and downs the rest in one go. The lemon leaves a warm, sticky aftertaste in the back of his throat. Fucking delicious. He tips the crystal back and pours a bit more in his glass and downs another shot before setting his empty glass down on the balustrade. He has found he cares not for smashing glass around Catherine; the sound is too loud and he would rather hear her clearly. She does say the most fascinating things.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” he asks, genuinely curious now as to how she spends her days. He does know her schedule, albeit with a certain absence: it is recited to them every morning by dutiful Orlo, who is already such a fucking bore he can still put people to sleep narrating erotica. He’s digressing. What had he been thinking? Oh yes. What does she do in the in between?

“Leo,” she answers softly.

Oh.

Him.

Right.

 _Annoying_.

“How is the small chap doing, by the way?” It is difficult to ask, but he does anyway, because he's not a pussy.

“He is very well, thank you for asking,” she says curtly. 

He mimicks her stance and leans his weight onto his elbows against the smooth wood of the balustrade. The grounds are dark. There is nothing to see.

What is she thinking?

“Has he improved in eating pussy?”

Catherine, who had been just about to take a sip of her drink, chokes. “You ask the most crass of questions.”

“Satisfaction requires a certain degree of crassness, do you not think?”

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Perhaps there is some truth to that.”

“So has he?” he prompts.

“I—” she purses her lips. “Yes.”

“Grand.” Fucker.

—

As luck would have it, his glory does not last long, because the court is a bunch of greedy fucking _morons_ who underestimate his mercy time and fucking time again. He watches Gorky’s body being carted off with bile rushing up his throat. His hands itch to tear something apart. A room, a body, he does not fucking care.

Through a haze of broken furniture he registers Catherine striding towards him. She does not tread carefully like Aunt Elisabeth - no, she walks right into the thick of his rage and pulls him back with a look of soft concern. _“What is wrong?”_ comes the caress of her voice, and he drops onto his bed as Aunt Elisabeth prattles on about coups and usurpers and - there goes the mirror.

Not even Catherine can assuage him now. She is a sweet little thing who does not know the efficacy of torture. He does. He has seen men cow before pincers and heated steel. They will not make a _fool_ out of him.

He’d just won over fucking Sweden. Granted, with Catherine’s help. Perhaps he could show her his hand at strategy as well.

“Orlo!” he bellows, kicking the doors open. “Get your fucking paper and ink!”

He has the schedules wallpapered by the end of the hour, and resolves to forget about it until the truth is squeezed, torn, and pummelled out of whatever misguided idiot _fuck_ who somehow thought they could blindside him.

In the meantime, he will sup on perfectly-aged cheese and swallow champagne by the mouthful, living Emperor life to the fullest.

He chews disinterestedly on what now tastes like wet socks between his teeth.

Fucking bastards.

Even his favourite cheese tastes shit.

“You just need to find the plotters,” Catherine suggests. “Let your feelings focus your action.”

“That seems smart,” he deliberates, and is distracted by a glare of gold. “Your hair is golden in the sun.”

“Like Archie, perhaps. The church is a powerful entity, and they do not like your free-thinking ways.”

Catherine may be onto something. Archie has done nothing but simper and nag as of late. It is grating. “He is often disdainful and does often get yell-y at me these days.”

“He called me evil,” Catherine adds indignantly. “ _And_ put his fingers inside me.”

“And put the raven in my room.” Wanker. _Speaking_ of which-- “ _And._ Does not fuck. That can do things to a man.”

Trust him, he’s seen shit.

“Indeed,” Catherine agrees gravely. 

They concur once more. He finds it increasingly pleasurable when she does. It sure as hell makes his cock hard.

“I suggest for safety, you place Archie under house arrest immediately. We will find a malleable bishop in his group, who will send his forged sermons, sign his name to them, and at some point when you have found a loyal replacement,” Catherine raises her eyebrows, looking absolutely thrilled with her plan, “ _kill him._ ”

Well _fuck_ him.

“And we can go back to normal court life,” she finishes.

She is marvelous, has he mentioned? “Brilliant,” he laughs and she accepts his praise with a modest bob of her head. “Once, you gave me a twig and were a doe-eyed fool. Now you want to kill the patriarch.” Knowing his wife was not above murder was doing things to him. “I have never wanted to fuck you so much.”

He is about to suggest they cut the picnic short when she says, “I care for you. That is all.”

Now, he’s heard many a person say that to him in his life, but none proclamation mattered so much as hers in that moment. It was remarkable, how well they worked together once they set their differences apart, and once he started eating her pussy. She became all at once graceful yet commanding; soft hands and warm gaze, pink lips and yellow-framed green eyes that reminded him of early spring. 

And she always made the best decisions.

“Huzzah. Let us go.” 

Catherine’s eyebrows knit together. “Where?”

“See if you’re right.”

Orlo looks a right nervous shit as they stride into the hall where the torture was taking place. Peter has a hard time the tiny man ever killed a man despite him bringing it up at every opportunity: he looks like he can barely stomach the screaming, punching, yelping chaos around him.

He surveys the scene and notes with interest the fingernails that litter the floor by Lady Svenska’s feet. “This looks great.”

Chekhov dissolves out of nowhere as is his wont, covered in blood yet looking as coolly detached as ever. “Yes, we have five stations going at the moment, working from left to right. We have fingernails, face eels--”

 _Face_ eels. He leans over the banister to take a better look at the crackling blue basins. It reminded him of his science party. Wicked.

“—and then a kind of mental torture.”

Bricks in the face. Brilliant.

That’ll cough up the plotter.

Except it turns out not so brilliant when Catherine - pure Catherine, gentle Catherine, soft-as-snow and brave as _fuck_ Catherine - decides to prove some kind of fucking point by demanding that she be tortured as well.

Walking through the bedlam and decay, he tries to imagine her with a bloodied face and blanches immediately at the thought.

“It is best,” Catherine urges quietly. “The court must see you are being fair to all.”

“I suppose so.” It still makes no sense.

“Trust me.”

Sometimes, the way she looks at him isn’t that of a flower at all. It is filled with a strength that blooms quietly, never demanding; firm boundaries and a skin made of dragonscale. 

He does trust her.

This was fucking madness.

She was fucking mad.

Oh, bloody hell, she’s heading for the fingernail station and he has to muster up all the balls he has to not look away.

—

Senseless, unnecessary _pain_. That’s what he got from it. Which is fucking weird, since he’s not the one with his nails pinched between menacing looking clippers, but it’s his throat that feels hoarse when Catherine screams.

Remember when he thought she always made the best decisions?

He was wrong.

He is man enough to admit.

This is _balls_.

“Stop!” he snarls, but it is too late - the tip of Catherine’s finger is pulp between bloodied pincers. 

He is the Emperor, the court is crying, Catherine is screaming, some cunt slips in a patch of blood—

—

It is at this point that the author would like to step in to give the Emperor and Empress an interlude to catch their breath, for many things happen afterwards: for one, Grigor has a total fucking breakdown over a pear; Catherine is rendered boneless from her face almost being smashed in with a brick, and Peter, George and Grigor kill Orlov, who had a total fucking breakdown over a peach.

That, and Peter discovers that Grigor might be right.

In the midst of an applause eerily familiar and yet distinct from the end of the war, in the fanfare of crashing glass and throaty, hoarse cries in the wake of Catherine’s haunting speech, Peter realises he might actually be in love with his wife.

—

And because he’s always been a particular brand of impulsive idiot, he tells her.

You can imagine how that went.

—

Peter is looking as dazed as she feels as they walk through the throng. The look on their faces is markedly changed: no longer does the court look at them with abject hatred and disgust. Her father’s invisible hand had rested on her shoulder, and she felt, for a moment, as if she was back home, in his study, bent over yet another game of chess.

The moment had overtaken her, she had been lying in repose far too long. She is done being a pawn.

She is Empress.

It would do well for the court to remember.

“You were marvelous at cheering them,” Peter says, breaking through her thoughts as he always does.

She smiles benignly. “It looked as if the torture may have got them down.”

“Good night’s sleep and they’ll be fine.” He sounds so sure of it, and she somehow understood that he might be right. The court is a fickle, everchanging beast. She had tried for too long to evade the rules, but she’d gotten it all wrong. She had failed to understand them - or more aptly, had chosen to misunderstand. She knows better now. To understand the rules is to know more than the rules. She had to have first understood the underlying principles of the court.

And once she grasped it, the court was hers, standing strong atop a pillar she’d carved herself: a pillar that suggested Archie may have been right, to a certain extent, about soldiering through pain.

Nothing is more unifying than grief.

Today, the people grieved the loss of what they’d once thought was their reality. 

Tomorrow, they will awaken with purpose in their breast.

She had made sure of it.

So heady was she in her glory she almost misses the look Peter gives her; how he lingered.

—

Well.

She doesn’t know what to make of it.

Peter had just said - 

Oh, she has to pause.

Of all the _ridiculous_ —

She doesn’t know what to make of it, after his confession of wanting to touch her hair. 

OF ALL THE RIDICULO—

She was better than this. She will… treat it as if he’s just admitted his love of chocolate ganache.

There. 

Easy.

With a nod mostly to herself, Catherine begins the ridiculously long trek down the hall. She knows he is looking—that he _must_ be looking - she can _feel_ his eyes on the back of her neck as she walks—oh, but _damn_ her body, how it is refusing to bow to any sort of reason. Her neck aches to turn. There is a gap in her imagination that must be filled. That must know if he is looking back at her. She cannot explain it. Peter is beyond sense, she has long known that. 

And yet she turns, because she will never stop looking for the tender in him.

She turns and their eyes meet. She lifts her hand in a parting wave, as if that might usher him on, back to his own quarters. He barely lifts his hand in response; perhaps, like her, he too is perplexed that she’s paused to look back at him.

Or that he’s just said all those things now drumming in the air between them.

Or that he’s just kissed her.

And that it had felt - it doesn’t matter.

She stares at him, and he her.

It’s fucking bizarre.

She weighs her options. The guards have gone, everyone else has drifted off to their own apartments to nurse their wounds. There is nobody there to bear witness to the great indecision that had nestled itself in her chest. 

And so she turns fully to face him once again.

Peter looks at her the same way he does when she quotes Descartes.

“Perhaps,” she says, pretending her voice is as smooth and sure as it always is, “perhaps the palace is not safe as I’d imagined.”

Peter, marvelous _acteur_ that he is, jumps at the opportunity. “You know what, I think I heard some strange noises coming from the hall. From your room! You should probably sleep in my apartments tonight.”

She takes a step forward. “It’s a pity you’ve dismissed your guards,” she says conversationally. “I would’ve felt safer with them around.”

“You will be safe enough with me, wife,” he assures her, perhaps a bit too boastfully for her liking - but she is still walking towards him where he beckons, and she still takes his arm. Maybe he’s not the idiot here.

Her bandaged finger is enveloped in the crook of his arm and she wonders what kind of reflex he must have to immediately loosen his hold, to trace a finger with a care she’s not observed from him before.

“We shall get Chekhov to replace the wrappings once more,” he murmurs thoughtfully.

“No, it’s fine. I just had them changed before dinner,” she says.

“Oh, well. That’s good.”

“Yes.”

“It wouldn’t do to have it infected. I’d never forgive myself.”

She eyes him curiously. “It’s not your fault.”

It kind of was.

He ducks his head. “Perhaps I was a bit too hasty about the whole torture thing.”

Catherine nearly lets go of his arm in shock. “Is that regret I hear in your tone?”

“It got you hurt,” he points out.

“And now the court knows that you are fair and just. Even if it is at my expense,” she says. This is what she does. He goes berserk, she placates. Plays the role of the soothing wife, something she knows will endear him to her. Nothing out of the usual, but yet her words sound warmer even to her.

The hall is dark just outside his room; she can’t make out his face. “You’re not to do that again.”

“I promise to stay away from any and all nail clippers in the foreseeable future.”

The door opens for them and he leads her into the room, already warm from the fire going. “You know, sometimes you can be quite funny.”

“Have you only just noticed?” she quips as she gives a nod of acknowledgement to the maid bowing elegantly, waiting for the command to undress her.

“No,” Peter waves her away with a magnanimous sort of puff. “I shall do it!”

“Are you sure?” Catherine blurts out before she can stop herself. Peter can handle a fork and knife well enough, but she’s never actually seen him touch a single button on his own self. She rolls her eyes, stepping out of her shoes, but is only astonished when Peter proves that he isn’t jesting, regarding her expectantly. She regrets the loss of her heels. She is never more aware of his height when she is barefoot.

At her stare, Peter makes an impatient nose and gestures for her to turn around.

She feels her back being scrutinised in an entirely different way than before; smiles at the crackling fireplace at how cocksure he sounds.

“How hard could it be?” Peter muses, studying the buttons that run down her back critically, and soon enough ludicrously. “Christ, there are so many fucking buttons.” 

“I did try to stop you,” she snorts, looking over her shoulder at him.

She’s startled when he straightens up suddenly and demands, “That noise!”

“What noise?” she snaps, scowling at how her cheeks heat up with the reminder of when she’d _last_ said that, but he can’t see her blush in the firelight. 

“You laughed.” His eyes narrow. “You do not laugh.”

“I laugh,” she says defensively. “People sing songs of how joyous I am.”

“Not like that.”

“Like what?”

Instead of answering, Peter tilts his head at her. His finger goes down to the first button, tugging it open with some effort.

“My father always had the court roaring with laughter. From anyone else the stories would have been bloody mundane, but not my father.” Peter shakes his head. His smile is rueful. “He could have any room in stitches no matter their station. I think even the guards cracked a smile. Bit like magic sometimes.”

Catherine wonders where he’s going with this.

“Their adulation was like fucking rain. I’ve come to notice,” he says, all too brusque in that way of his when he’s trying to be casual, “that when you make people laugh, they love you.”

He does not look at her until the last second. Bad poker face. Peter has always had a bad poker face. Catherine felt the charity drain from her bones. All at once it seemed difficult to feign being at ease. She lowers her gaze with pursed lips and turns away once more. 

“I am tired,” she says. “It’s been a long day of torture. Undress me so I may rest.”

Peter says nothing for a fashion. He seems to be having trouble with her buttons. Serves him _right_ , she thinks with brief brutality; serves him right for being so fucking cocky. It is just another reminder that he’s a fumbling boy playing at being Emperor, parading around in his father’s coat and his mother’s pearls. He thinks himself the King of Kings, and yet cowers at the sight of mere buttons.

“Alright?” she asks-- no, she mocks. She is so angry, and so _tired_ of pretending for him. Let him know she is mocking him. Let him know that this is where he ought to be, her standing proud and him struggling with her dress.

“Impatient, aren’t you?” He undoes another button off as if to spite her. And then another, and another, until cool air nips at her shoulder blades, now exposed to the room. Her skin is hot to the touch - she flushes so easily under duress, but she’s not sure why she is _in_ duress. She has not gotten this far by giving in so easily to her whims. But how she _wanted_ to. She wants to fight him, to scream and shout until she is hoarse. She wants to shake him for changing the rules. She wants her mother to caress her hair and remind her she is human. She wants Leo to burst into the room and drag her away to a foreign Peter-less land. She wants--

“You do not love me.” It is not a question. He had not posed it as one, so she can’t pretend to not know the answer to that. It is an absolute, and usually Catherine thrives in absolutes, in knowing her reality.

To say no would be a step under treason, wouldn’t it? Is Peter testing her? He must. He likes keeping people on their toes. He likes being mean, a spoilt little brat.

These are things she knows - but lately her world has started to have a tint of grey to it. Her mind was not according itself to the boundaries her toughened hands had painstakingly built, brick by brick, in a wide circle around her. What she recognised as cognitive dissonance overtaking her was, as Marial would say, a bitch.

“I think,” she says, as gently as she can muster, which isn’t much - “I think you do not know what love is.”

“You think me a child,” he says, uncharacteristically on the nose. “ _You_ think, because I am not as well-read as you, that I cannot be perceptive to my own emotions?”

“I have not seen you touch one book since I’ve got here.”

“That’s because you and Orlo hoard them all.”

“It isn’t as if I’ve never extended an invitation,” she reminds him sharply. “Remember, I did want you to read with me -” she was breaching dangerous territory, that unspoken agreement between them to speak of his unforgivables, “- for our minds to expand together, for us to rule in a different way. You remember how that went?”

“That,” he grits his teeth, “was a different time. I did not love you then. I love you now.”

“And that has leveled me in your eyes? Made me your equal?”

His fingers tug on the next button: she feels herself lurching backwards. “Don’t be haughty.”

Her lips curl in a vindictive grin around her next words. “How easily your disposition sways.”

“Is it any surprise, when you’re being so fucking difficult?” Peter flicks three buttons open in quick succession. If she wasn’t so angry she’d be impressed. 

Oh, she’ll show him _difficult_. She’ll show him all the cards she’s held in tight fists to her chest. “And is it any surprise, given our history, that I would be so reluctant in returning your affections?”

“I have not hurt you once these past months.” He sounds like he’s warning her; stopping her from saying something so errantly destructive before it’s too late. “I haven’t fucked anyone but you in weeks.”

“How romantic,” she spits.

“We have established that I am not a romantic man, and I have _never_ ,” he grunts over a particularly difficult button, “pretended otherwise.”

Her bodice sags about her breasts. Peter, bless his clever little soul, is finally halfway through. She shoots him a withering glare. “A bowl of strawberries and a few kind gestures. That is what love is to you.” 

“ _And_ keeping away from my whores,” he points out with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t be so selective.”

Blood rushes to her cheeks. She wants to step away but his hands keep her where she is. “You think your newfound chasteness means something to me just because you’d fuck anything that moves.”

“It bloody well should. I thought you were supposed to be clever.”

“It is because I’m _clever_ that I know what you feel is a farce. Love is about more than that--it’s about _reason_ , which is a basic human function that you’ve never been able to comprehend, so what makes you think I’ll be so easily convinced? You love borscht. You love larks and weird sex and japing about. You know nothing about true love, the kind of love one feels in their marrow. The kind of love one needs.”

“Borscht is fucking delicious, something you would not understand since you are German, so I will not have your slandering it. You also do not understand how much I _do_ understand. You are clever in a way that beguiles me, in a way that makes me think you should have been born a man; in fact, you face blood like a man, which both appalls and turns me on. But underneath all that willfulness you can still get things so _wrong_ when you’re feeling all overzealous, which you often are.”

“If you’re talking about the torture thing—”

“I _am_ talking about the torture thing,” he snaps.

She clenches her fists.

“ _The kind of love one feels in their marrow_ ,” Peter repeats under his breath. He turns away from her, shaking his head, lost in whatever fascinating narrative that’s currently running through his head.

“Do not mock me,” she says. Her nails dig into her palms. “I will not take it.”

Blades for eyes, that's what he has. They cut into her with his returning gaze. 

“Will you take it,” Peter breathes, a warmth coats her lips; his voice quiet, like silk, “if I said I needed you?”

Her breath catches in her throat, whilst his eyes drop to her mouth: her downturned, trembling mouth.

“I would say it is too late,” she says, harsh, and she has never meant anything more. 

Her dress slides off her shoulders. Peter is done. So is she. She feels as if she’s been running, tumbling. Her breath is uneven and she is momentarily displaced, as if hit by a wave of water. And she thinks: she hasn’t seen the sea in so long.

Peter looks into her eyes again. She feels a bit like a boat. Adrift, helpless to the change in the winds, tugged forward by invisible force. 

This is it, she thinks. This is what her long game has come to. She’s fucked everything up. She couldn’t just shut the fuck up and bleat a tune and take a tumble in his bedsheets. She couldn’t just whisper sweet nothings about bearing his heirs. She is so fucking stupid sometimes.

If her body is to be hanged in the wide arch of the green-marbled hall come sunrise, let it be known she did not go quietly. She takes a deep breath and lifts her chin the way she’s wanted to for months, she shows him the full force of her defiance in a single gaze.

Peter might have his lot of guards and his mighty blows, but she has her heart in his teeth and she is not afraid to bite. Her eyes tell him this much.

But Peter - fuck him, when has he _ever_ made any kind of sense? And she used to pride herself in knowing his tells? She’s dumber than she thought. Her pride takes a blow when Peter doesn’t push her, doesn’t produce a dagger out of thin air to slide it between her ribs. Peter doesn’t do anything she expects him to do. 

He is laughing at her.

She had practically spit his affection at his feet and instead of throwing the much-predicted tantrum he is _laughing at her._

“You look so cute when you’re angry, wife,” he chortles. “Let’s hurry it up a bit; we still have your hair to contend with.”

She can’t stop looking at him. She can’t understand what he’s saying. She recognises each individual word, but it’s mush in her brain. “Did you hear what I said?”

Peter shrugs. “I did. But I have elected to ignore it in favour of the fact that, while you might not love me, you certainly want me.”

“You’ve finally gone mad,” she accuses with slits for eyes. “This is a trick - you’re going to have the guards drag me away any minute now.”

“Catherine,” he sighs, and it blows across her cheeks. He places his hands on her shoulder and guides her into a slow turn, until they are eye to eye. “I can put you on that desk over there, and furious or not, I’d have you liquid with my tongue alone.”

“A bodily reaction,” she snarls. “My mind knows otherwise.”

“For a while,” Peter continues as if he hadn’t heard her, “I thought I’d burnt the fire out of you. You were so quiet. So pleasing to me. I missed your fire.”

“I thought you’d prefer that to a scowling cunt.”

“I thought so too,” he says. She cannot decipher his smile. She is still very much on guard when he takes a step back and shrugs off his coat: it lands heavily on the floor. His mother’s pearls drape down his neck and into his thin shirt. He always dresses like he’s unaffected by the cold. It only stokes her irritation further.

“I suppose even the emperor can be wrong,” she says. _And you are_ , she doesn’t add. _All the time._

“Though it doesn’t happen very often, with you I find it refreshing,” he admits candidly. “You’re a firecracker.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“If I said it was, are you going to continue glaring at me?”

She shoves her sleeves down her arms; lifts them to cover her breasts. “My anger is not for your amusement.”

“I will have you smiling soon enough.” He toes his boots off, and then his breeches are the next to go. Unsettled, and for want of something to do, she starts slithering out of her dress, baring herself to him. It’s nothing he has not seen before. She will not shy from his gaze.

His eyes don’t land on her breasts as she expects - _wrong again, Catherine_ \- he sighs and catches her chin in his hands. It is not so rough a gesture. In fact, and she notes this with bewilderment, it is gentle. His hand cups her face without holding her there, like he would allow her to pull away if she wants to.

“I do not like it when you are upset,” he says softly, tracing a thumb across her jaw. “Especially with me. And unfortunately, I am all out of diamonds.”

“There are other ways to apologise,” she says through stiff lips. She can’t help but prompt, “An actual apology?”

“Father told me to never back down in a fight,” he ruminates, and _God_ , this old song and dance? To that, she rolls her eyes and snaps, “Well, you are not your father.”

His eyes pin hers with a look so searching, so intent. He knows she does not mean it the way everyone else does - that it is not a taunt, a morsel of regret, a tune of despair. It is an absolute, a dismantling of the cast he has set himself in, an invitation to rise. To be different. Prolonged exposure to courtlife must have corrupted her, because deep in her heart she knows he can be different. 

“It is as simple as deciding to be,” he murmurs.

The shift in the air between them is lightning-quick. Her boat is upended, she is dashed by the sea, salt washing away the remnants of her fury. The steel in her lungs is replaced by a swelling that is almost suffocating. She feels much like a paper doll, blown up with one sharp breath.

She feels the soft pad of his thumb dip into the shadow beneath her lower lip. “Things _can_ be different between us, you know.”

She does not recognise her own voice when she warns, “Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”

Peter smirks. “Where is my optimistic wife?”

She closes her eyes. Allows herself to deflate. To breathe.

Peter inches further into her space. His lips brush against her lashes. “Let us not be cross with each other. Someone tried to kill me today, and I killed the fucker. We should be celebrating.”

Rostov. 

Right. 

Fuck. 

It is then that she breaks, the weight of the day’s failures finally catching up to her, turning even the heady memory of crashing glass and thunderous applause into a dull knife’s edge. She feels it buried in her heart, to the very hilt; her tips of her fingers grazing a finishing line that only seemed to slip further and further away with every breath she took.

Peter’s touch falters. “Don’t cry.” 

Her eyes open with difficulty - her lashes are stuck together in a sticky, wet mess. She was a fool to have felt hopeful today. She couldn’t even keep her closest allies in check. Her misstep had cost a man his life. She may never eat a peach again.

“Catherine,” Peter says, worry thick in his voice. His arms wrap around her. His ridiculously expensive sleeves are thin and kitten-soft, a comfort blanketing the curve of her spine. “Please. It’s alright - I am alive, and we are safe.”

She cries even harder, laughter wrestling with the sob stuck in her throat. She is every blubbering woman’s stereotype now, shoulders shaking, fists trembling, face red in the rising hysteria that she feels. And she’s naked. The room is cold and she’s naked but for her garters and stockings and her husband is holding her, like any reasonable husband would an upset wife, and the sensation isn’t as alarming as her crying might suggest.

Peter is comforting his wife, the woman actively plotting to kill him. She is naked and trembling in his arms, and he doesn’t even have a fucking hard on.

He fucking _loves_ her.

It is one more point in his favour: he has proven that he is human after all, heart sloshing a vulnerable red in the gaping maw she’d once thought his chest. It is evidence of humanity and light and she hates how she feels as if she’s winning the battle yet still losing the war.

His lips brush unfamiliarly across her temple. It startles her out of her tearful reverie, the closeness of his body against hers. They have never been this close even when fucking. 

Peter raises one hand to pluck at the jewels in her hair. With a few deft tugs her hair unravels about her shoulders. The pins drop to the floor in silent clatters. If she focuses, she can feel their tiny little vibrations as they lose themselves in the fibre of the carpet. 

Sweeping her hair from her forehead, Peter says, “Let’s go to bed.”

She nods. Defeated.

They change into their sleepwear in silence. Hers, weary; his, gauging. 

She climbs into the bed she’s only slept in a handful of times in the last six months, hating how, despite how little time she’s spent in it, it feels altogether too familiar.

Peter awkwardly places the pillows around them, and at the last minute, decides not to have a goose-down barrier between them, which is how they usually sleep.

This time, however, there is no vodka-induced haze to lull her to sleep. Her body is not slicked in sweat as she usually is when she ends up in his bed.

She is exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with having been tortured, and more to do with her row with Peter. Talking to him is tiring on most days, on account of the fact that she has to always be one step ahead of him, but tonight’s mental drain is of a different nature.

She feels cut open. Split at the seams. Something’s leaking out of her. Junipers, maybe.

Peter loves her, she is in his bed, Leo’s head would probably _swim_ at this—

Except, he doesn’t have to know, does he?

Nobody has to know.

There are no witnesses to burn, she reminds herself.

“You are awfully quiet, and I know it is not because you are trying to sleep.”

What a terrible time for Peter to be endowed with the gift of perception. She eyes the ceiling critically, chastising whatever higher power above for their lack of tact. It would have saved her months of her life.

“I am just thinking,” she says softly in reply. “Do not ask me what.”

She can practically _feel_ Peter fighting back the impulse; lets out a breath of relief when he lies back, letting out a resigned sigh.

Much like a discarded plank would she lies beside him, letting the stress of the day seep from her skin into the bedclothes. Neither of them had bothered getting under the covers, despite the cold. Her arms lay by her side, unanimated, unmoving, her fingers unfurled in a loose bloom.

Then:

An interruption.

To the cold.

In the centre of her palm.

Peter.

“Is this alright?” he asks softly.

She swallows inaudibly, feeling the soft weight of his forefinger in the centre of her palm.

Peter is asking.

He never asks.

She finds her voice. “It is…”

Peter waits, and when she cranes her neck to look at him his eyes are comically wide; he looks as if he’s holding his breath.

“...comforting,” she confesses.

The warm cover of his hand is not immediate: no, he first slides the rest of his fingers onto the flat of her open hand, and the five points burn against her skin. Russian nights are so cold, she reasons, any skin would be so warm.

His forefinger and thumb wrap around her bandaged finger. Then the rest of his fingers weave through hers.

And they lie there on the bed, husband and wife, holding hands.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chekhov is possibly my fave. he's Da Boss. 
> 
> please let me know what you think :)

**Author's Note:**

> this is pretty much my first fic from a fandom that isn't tvd in FOREVER, and the show is so bizarre and tonally-specific that i found it quite difficult. please comment and let me know what you think!
> 
> oh I'm also on tumblr @ highgaarden


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